76 NOTES ON THE SIAMESE PROVINCES OF KOOW1, &C. 



cotton plants, and other vegetables, while round about are 

 numerous groves of coco-nut and betel-net palms, plantains 

 and jack fruit trees. A house rather larger than the others, 

 but quite as dilapidated, proclaims the residence of the Gover- 

 nor, and an open shed near his Excellency's house serves as 

 a court of justice by day and a sala or rest-house by night. 

 At a little distance from the village, commonly in the health- 

 iest and prettiest situation, always shaded by trees, stands 

 the wat or pagoda, the centre of education and religion and 

 which shelters a yellow-robed priest to every forty inhabitants 

 in the town. Five or six houses of rather large dimensions, 

 but, unlike all the other houses, not raised on posts, with 

 numerous pigs feeding in front of them and with the doors 

 pasted over with red posters, are the shops of the village, in- 

 variably owned and conducted by the Chinese. Here are 

 sold dyes and calico prints, Manchester and Birmingham goods 

 of very inferior quality, while buffalo hides and horns, dried 

 fish, coco-nuts and betel-nuts are bought or exchanged. The 

 opium farm, the gambling farm, and the spirit farm are al- 

 ways in the hands of the Chinese, and while waiting some- 

 times in the " grog-shop " I have been surprised to see men 

 and women come straggling in, tendering their two cents and 

 tossing off their arrack much as one sees in England. 



The Inhabitants. 



Settling down at one of those villages, and taking a random 

 hundred of the inhabitants, one would find them something 

 like this : — 6 Chinamen wedded to 6 Siamese women and hav- 

 ing 13 children between them ; 16 would be found Siamese- 

 Chinese of a former generation. Of pure Siamese 10 men 

 have wedded 10 Siamese women and 18 children have been 

 the outcome, while 1 1 would be unmarried Siamese — male 

 and female. Forty-one per cent, is a low estimate of the 

 proportion of Chinese and Chinese descendants that still 

 wear a queue, for in some towns such as Taiyong they 

 constitute more than 70% of the population. Into the 

 numerous villages lying along the 3,000 miles of coast between 



